Six months ago, the Google Impact Challenge (GIC) asked Kenyan, Nigerian, and South African social innovators for big and bold ideas to drive community impact. We received more than 5,000 submissions across the continent.

Today, 36 local nonprofit leaders and social entrepreneurs across Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa stood onstage and pitched their ideas to grow economic opportunity in their countries and beyond to a panel of expert judges. 12 total finalists were selected as winners by our judges and three “People’s Choice” awardees were announced, after more than 200,000 public votes were tallied, the highest in any Impact Challenge globally.

We would like to congratulate the winners in each country:

Thanks to all of those who applied, took time preparing their proposals and shared ways in which they wanted to impact their communities. Congratulations to the finalists who have made it today.We will be rooting for you and will partner you with Googlers to bring your ideas to life over the coming months.

Winners will receive a $250,000 grant from Google.org, while finalists will receive a $125,000 grant - totaling $6M in new grant funding across the continent.

We’re inspired by the passion and vision of all of our finalists - and the real work is just beginning. We are excited to partner with these organizations as they dig in to new and innovative projects to make our communities even better.

Thanks to everyone from all of the organisations who applied, all of the public who voted, to our esteemed judges, and most of all, the 36 finalists. Today was a celebration because of you.

From the beginning of Google, our mission — to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful — has always pushed us to bring more people online and create a more inclusive Internet. This is particularly true for Africa, where the population is over 1.2 billion and the number of working age young people will exceed that of the rest of the world combined by 2035. In Africa - where over 800 million people still do not have access to an internet-connected device - we aspire to provide access, products and platforms that enable them to succeed.

To this end, we have worked with our partners, the mobile network operators and device manufacturers from across the continent and globally. We listened carefully to our users who wanted faster devices and more storage in particular, and created Android (Go edition). This configuration of the Android OS is optimized for entry level devices and comes with a tailored suite of popular Google apps.

Android (Go edition) compliments our partners’ hardware innovations to overcome challenges such as limited storage space, battery life, lack of mobile data usage or device cost. We strive to bring the power of computing, access to the web and apps to everyone:

In the last 2 years we have made great strides in reaching this goal. Teaming up with manufacturers and telecommunication services providers, we launched over 60 Android (Go edition) smartphones in 49 African countries.

Thanks to our partnership with Safaricom, Kenyans now have the country's most affordable smartphone, “Neon Kicka 4” retailing at KES 3,500 (USD ~35) at their disposal. This has allowed thousands of people to convert from an older feature phone to a smartphone - making it their first smartphone ever. Similarly, budget conscious smartphone users in Nigeria can now purchase Android (Go edition) devices like the Tecno F1 or the Tecno Spark 2 which have become favorites amongst tech savvy early adopters. In South Africa 3G and 4G Android (Go edition) devices offered by Vodacom come with digital packages that make streaming high resolution videos faster and more affordable than ever before.

With Android (Go edition) applications like YouTube Go and Maps Go, we have built our core services from the ground up to work better on slower networks even when you are offline. They consume less data and help people save money.

This week at AfricaCom in Cape Town, we will come together with many of our partners to continue working to bring the transformative power of the internet to more Africans than ever before.

It’s not every day that you get a chance to make your community a better place. A few months ago, we kicked off the first Google Impact Challenge in Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa- a competition to find and fund the most innovative nonprofits and social enterprises that are using technology to create economic opportunity in their communities. We were bowled over by the response - more than 5000 nonprofits shared their best ideas with us.

Today, we’re announcing the finalists in the competition, who will all receive a $125,000 grant as well as support and training from Google to implement their ideas. We are also inviting the public to vote on their favourite projects. The people’s choice winner will double their award and win $250,000.

The 36 projects we have selected are all exciting and innovative applications of technology to solve big problems and create economic opportunity at scale. From building an interactive website to enhance public participation and transparency in policing, to developing a mobile information platform that empowers women traders to work safely across East Africa and building disability-friendly Digital Hubs to ensure persons with disabilities have access to ICT skills: All these are bold ideas that highlight both Africa’s talent for innovation and our culture of helping others.

The Finalists

Kenya

Creatives Garage: Kalabars - A platform that seeks to address issues that stifle the creative industry in Kenya. Creatives Garage focuses on African content, and wants African stories to be told in an African context

M-Shule: A personalised learning platform that combines AI with SMS to transform primary school education for students across Africa.

AfriScout—A PCI Social Enterprise:Revolutionising the way pastoralists make migration decisions using the power of satellite and mobile technology.

GiveDirectly Kenya: Giving unconditional cash grants to hundreds of young people living in Nairobi’s urban informal settlements to support entrepreneurship.

Sauti East Africa: A mobile information platform empowering women cross-border traders to work safely, legally and profitably across East Africa.

The MakerSpace Foundation: The MakerSpace offers tools, technology, training and physical work space to enable people to make things that improve the world around them.

The Youth Employment Service: A business-driven collaboration with government that offers a disruptive approach to South Africa's youth unemployment challenge.

And now it’s YOUR turn to have a say. Head over to the Nigeria voting site , Kenya voting site and South Africa voting site to learn more about the finalists in each of the countries, and to vote for the projects that you care about most. Voting opens today and you have until November 27 to select your favourite projects. In addition to the People's Choice Winner, our expert panel of Judges will select three additional winners after a live pitching session on November 28. These winners will also receive $250,000 in funding

We created the Google Impact Challenge because we truly believe that technology has the power to transform lives. Together, let’s empower Africans to drive community impact.